On the Devil's Doorstep
by mercurybard
Summary: Drabble. Dak stops for a quick drink before she and Jiub face Dagoth Ur. Just a quick moment between the two friends.


Disclaimer: I don't own _Morrowind_, though I do play it quite a bit.

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Dak dropped her rucksack and settled herself down on the metal floor, her ebony armor creaking. Jiub watched as she pulled a bottle from her pack and, uncorking it, took a swig. "We're in Dagoth U's sodding stronghold and you're stopping for a drink!" His voice squeaked with incredulousness.

She lowered the bottle—sujamma, he guessed from the markings on the outside—and rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to get drunk. Just a little something to take the edge off. I'm a bundle of nerves." The hellish red light that filled the ancient dwemer fortress made her pale eyes glisten. She looked around. "Don't know why though since we've been here before—to get that cross thing." She held the bottle out to him.

He took it. She wasn't the only one with nerves. "The Crosier of St. Llothis," he corrected. Yep, definitely sujamma—the smell was unmistakable. He took a sip of the stuff anyways, swallowing it as quickly as possible in the hopes that he wouldn't taste it. It burned his throat on the way down and made him shudder when it hit his belly. Maybe it would make his hands stop shaking.

He took a moment to look his partner over as he handed back her booze. She'd had to remove her daedric facemask to drink, and it rest by her knee like a grim, decapitated head. Her own face was flushed from the heat. The Wraithguard on her left hand cast a strange purple light across her pale skin, making odd shadows chase one another over her angular features. "How's the hand?" Jiub asked, nodding toward the gauntlet.

She looked down at it and shrugged. "Doesn't hurt anymore unless I try to pull it off, then it feels like my skin's gonna come off with it." She drank some more. If she was as nervous as he was, then she was hiding it better.

That was the price she'd paid for offering to face down Dagoth Ur. She wasn't the Nerevarine. Jiub wasn't either. As best they could tell, the true Nerevar Incarnate had been knifed on the boat trip over here, his body dumped over the side for the slaughterfishes to eat. By sheer luck of being the last two off said boat, the Emperor's little minions, the Blades, had decided to try and pass Jiub off as an Incarnate. That had worked for maybe a minute. No one was dumb enough to think he was Moon-and-Star, the reincarnation of one of the greatest heroes of his people, the Dunmer. He was just a tomb robber from Necrom. But someone had to do something about Dagoth Ur.

It had been Dak who had decided it would be them. At first, he'd merely dismissed her plan to kill the Sharmat as more of her drunken delusions. Considering the plan started with them breaking into the palace in Vivec City and confronting the Vivec himself, it wasn't hard to see why. But, even sober with the hangover from Hell, she'd still wanted to try. She couldn't stand to see him have another nightmare, she said. The Devil had plagued his dreams since coming to Vvardenfell, whispering madness nightly in his ears. It had helped when they'd clean the Sixth House cultists out of Hassour and Mamaea—made it easier for her to wake him up in the middle of one of the dreams—but the dreams always came. He suddenly wanted more of the sujamma even though he knew another sip would make him tipsy.

She rapped her knuckles against the Wraithguard, the ebony gauntlet on her right hand clanging against the ancient dwemer metal. "I wonder if Vivec will forgive you for killing him."

"I'm not the one who slid the blades into him—that was all you and Meleena," Jiub answered, eying the sujamma. "And Vivec isn't dead."

"We stabbed him until his corpse hit the floor, then we took the Wraithguard and got the hell out." She was very blunt about it.

"He's a god, Dak; you can't kill a god."

"He won't be a god for much longer." She rose, grabbing the facemask as she stood. "The only thing between us and the Heart of Lorkhan is Dagoth Ur." She slid the mask over her head, obscuring her sharp features behind the hellish visage. From her belt, she took Sunder, hefting the ancient weapon in her left hand.

Jiub snorted. "You say that like he'll be easy to kill."

She turned the mask towards him, and he knew she was smiling behind it. "He's just another Dark Elf, Jiub. Just keep thinking that."


End file.
